Page 103 of John Eyre

“It had seemed to work before. What did I know but that it might work again? After dosing everyone, I collected some rope and a lantern—and Mr. Poole, of course. He was obliged to accompany me, poor devil. He despises small spaces. And there was a chance it would all be for nothing. That we’d find my husband’s lair empty. But he was there, much to my astonishment. Asleep, just as he’d been when last I dared enter. He hadn’t taken any precautions at all. Hadn’t been afraid in the least.” She refilled her glass. “It was his fatal mistake, underestimating me.”

The embers in the grate crackled and snapped, sending sparks up the chimney. It startled John. Made him aware that he’d been all but holding his breath as he listened to Bertha’s tale.

She crossed the room, her crepe skirts rustling over her petticoats. “While he slept in that strange sleep of his, unable to fully wake, unable to do me harm, I poured a whole phial of laudanum down his throat. And then—with Mr. Poole’s help—I bound him with rope and dragged him out into the sunlight.”

John stared at her, momentarily speechless.

“You think me hard,” she said. “I have had to be.”

“Not hard, but—”

“Any compassion I might have had for him dried up the moment I saw what he’d done to Agnes. And then, when I found the boys…the anger within me grew. It burned so bright, all other emotion was reduced to cinders. I prayed the sun would put an end to him.”

“But it didn’t.”

“Nothing can.” She raised her glass to her lips, but didn’t drink. “He opened his eyes and writhed about, as if the torments of hell had been unleashed upon him. For the barest moment, I wondered if it was only the madness. The depth of his self-delusion. But his exposed skin began to turn red, as if the sun had burned him. It did burn him. He was weakened tremendously by the exposure. But he did not die.”

“Was there no one about? No villagers loyal to him who could have stopped you?”

“Not a one. Those who might have intervened were at market day. Besides, I had Mr. Poole with me—an intimidating fellow at the best of times. We loaded Edward into the cart and covered him with a tarpaulin. While Mr. Poole stood guard, I fetched my belongings—my money, letters of credit, and travel documents—and collected the boys. I made them sit up front with me, wrapped up in one of my cloaks. A more ramshackle lot you couldn’t imagine. But we hadn’t time to do better. By early afternoon, we were on the road to Varna.”

“And when it grew dark again? What then?”

“Ah. That was a trick. I knew he abhorred the touch of silver. In the next village we passed, I paid the smithy a small fortune to have a pair of silver manacles cast. It took most of the silver available in the vicinity, including every piece of silver jewelry I had in my possession. All but this.” She touched her locket. “I’d no idea if it would work. I knew my husband was strong, and that what powers he had derived from darkness, but—”

“Powers?” John couldn’t keep the doubt from seeping into his voice. “You can’t truly believe he’s an unnatural creature?”

“Can’t I? You said yourself that you saw the wolf on the road to Hay. How do you think such visions manifest?”

“I don’t know. But—”

“And what about the mist? You’ve seen it here, the way it clings to everything hereabouts, irrespective of the season. It nearly suffocated me the night it came into my room.”

He stared at her. “I thought that was smoke. From the fire.”

She huffed. “There was no fire. It was the mist, come in through an open window. That was him, John. And so was the thunder and lightning that came the night the Eshtons were obliged to shelter at Thornfield.”

“You’re telling me that he has the ability to influence the weather? To conjure the storm?”

“No.” Her face was grave, her tone ringing with certainty. “I’m telling you that he is the storm.”

John’s brow contracted. His initial reaction was one of utter disbelief. And then…

And then, he reminded himself of all he’d seen since coming to Thornfield. All he’d experienced. And he thought of her—looked at her. Bertha Rochester was no fantasist.

Her face fell. “You don’t believe me.”

“I do.” He paused. “That is, I want to. I’m only trying to understand.”

“I don’t fully understand it myself,” she said. “All I know is that he’s powerful, and that he possesses arts unknown to human men. Before I captured him, I suspect he was capable of transforming himself into the mist or a wolf or any creature of the night. The legends say he can. But since I’ve bound him in silver and deprived him of nourishment, he’s lost that ability. All that’s left is a remnant. A shadow of what he once was. It seeps out of him. And when he’s able to taste a drop of blood—as on the night he bit Mr. Poole’s arm—he gains the ability to direct that shadow. To render it lethal.”

John recalled the night the mist had come into Bertha’s bedchamber. The way it had seemed to absorb all of the oxygen from the air. It was why he’d thought it was smoke.

And what of the following morning? John had assumed the bandage on Mr. Poole’s arm had hidden a burn from starting the fire. But it hadn’t been a burn at all. It had been a bite wound, rendered by Mr. Rochester.

The realization left John cold. He struggled to accept it—to believe it—even as every particle of sense, every logical precept ingrained in him from his youth, rose up in protest at the impossibility of it all.

“What of the weather?” he asked. “The storm?”